Origami Harvest - Very Good, Based on 2 Critics

Pitchfork - 76Based on rating 7.6/10

76

Ever since his 2014 album The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier to Paint, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire has made patient development seem exciting, whether as bandleader or playing a sideman role. He has a lot of tools at his disposal on his roundabout path to dazzlement. In solos, the nimbleness of his phrasing and his steady tone control are immediately apparent, even when the overall shape of what he's crafting might seem hard to fathom.

T rumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire is part of that generation of west coast jazz musicians - such as Kamasi Washington, Thundercat and Terrace Martin - who appeared on Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. But he's by far the most adventurous musician in that crowd: a soloist who can shift gear from the warm and heart-tugging to the abstract and freaky within the same bar, and a composer whose extended song suites and elliptical song titles (My Inappropriate Soundtrack to a Genocide, for example) show a healthy stylistic restlessness. Origami Harvest is his most adventurous work to date, a collaboration with the forward-thinking Mivos string quartet and mischievous rapper Kool AD that makes a nonsense of musical categories.